PARTICIPATION Curley Looking for Inspiration from Teenage Girls ahead of Dublin City Marathon

The past fifteen months have been something of a roller coaster for Tullamore athlete, Pauline Curley following her qualification and subsequent participation in the marathon at the Beijing Olympics. She showed her intent to continue as an elite marathon runner in 2009 with a victory in the World Masters in Lahli, Finland in August.

Since returning from the marathon in Finland Pauline has competed in two half marathons and declared as a late entrant for the Dublin City Marathon. With so many long hard races in her legs in a short space of time, taking the national title at the Dublin City Marathon may be a bridge too far. But in the run up to the race, Pauline is seeking inspiration from the most unlikely of sources - 105 teenage girls from her native Offaly who will compete in a new event; the Pauline Curley Inter Schools Simultaneous Marathon Relay.

This marathon relay will see five post primary schools racing simultaneously against the clock, each in a different location. Each school team will comprise of 21 girls who will share the marathon run exchanging running duties after each 200m interval. Thus each girl will run ten 200m intervals before the team captain completes the final 195m to give the exact marathon distance. The objective for each school team is two fold; firstly to try to cover the marathon distance in a time faster than that achieved by Pauline in Rotterdam last year when she qualified to run at the Olympic Games - secondly to try and run faster than all other competing schools each of whom will be running simultaneously in different locations in the county.

"When Eamonn Henry from Offaly Sports Partnership asked me to put my name to this event I was more than happy to oblige when it was explained to me", said Pauline. "It's a terrific idea and we are very happy that five schools are going to compete. I'm looking forward to visiting them all and taking inspiration from their efforts".

Sports Partnership coordinator, Eamonn Henry explained, "We decided to develop this event for a number of reasons. We wanted to acknowledge Pauline's achievement as the first female athlete from Offaly to compete for Ireland at an Olympic Games. We wanted to give teenage girls an appreciation of the pace and duration at which Pauline had to compete in order to gain qualification and we wanted to increase and sustain teenage participation by introducing an activity which was attainable"

The Pauline Curley Marathon Relay is based on a similar event which was developed by George Bunner in the UK and run simultaneously in Manchester and London last year. This event saw teams of 32 children aged 11 years attempting (and narrowly failing) to break the world record of Haile Gebrselassie. The staging of Pauline Curley Marathon Relay has been made possible through the support of the Irish Sports Council's Women in Sport programme and the HSE. With the Sports Council being headed up John Treacy, Olympic silver medallist for the marathon and national record holder, it will be interesting to see if any of the teams in Offaly can beat his record next Friday.